Chapter Text
Against all odds, Wanda awoke with a stuttering gasp wrenching itself from her dried lips. The air burned in her lungs and airways, as if she had been drowned for so long that she had forgotten what it was like to breathe.
In the darkness, she hyperventilated for countless minutes, until she regained enough conscience to regulate her own breathing-in through her nose, out through her mouth.
A long time passed before she could somewhat understand her surroundings.
Her back was twisted in odd ways, while her legs and arms felt constricted and numb. She wiggled sluggishly from under the jagged rock imprisoning her body, and after what felt like an eternity, she found herself rolling to her side until she shakily crouched on all fours.
Channeling her left-over energy, she produced red misty light from her hands, and tried illuminating her surroundings.
She found herself under the wreckage of what had been Mount Wundagore, ash and dust floating through the little ventilation the caved in structure allowed. Straining under numbing pain, she willed the rubble of the worst decisions of her life away, leaving her to the cold and foggy tundra of Transia. Unable to stand, she crawled out of the crater where the altar in which she had hoped to die used to be.
A little away from her, she found a clothed human arm peeking from under a pile of boulders. Kneeling before it, her mind numb and unfeeling, Wanda dredged out rock after rock with her bare hands, occasionally using her magic to help with the larger and heavier rocks.
Her warm breath coming in white haze against the freezing cold, the red-haired woman dug and dug blindly, her nails breaking and fingers prickling. Once she was able to uncover the body under the rubble, the Scarlet Witch’s stomach turned as she recognized the battered corpse that Stephen Strange had possessed to fight her. Suddenly, the memories that had dulled and hidden from her tired mind resurfaced.
Westview. Her perfect home. Her twin boys, Tommy and Billy. Vision, her warm and loving husband-yet… Vizh, white and unfeeling and cold. Agatha draining her power as she laughed and laughed at her. Darkness and despair. Finally, a surge of raw power like no other. The brilliant truth that had eluded her: the sudden realization she could have it all, everything she had been barred from. A family.
But she also remembered summoning demons, enslaving them with her runes and spells. A child, with enough power to give her the universe she desired.
And the chase.
The chase had been the worst. A montage of horrid scenes of herself as the harbinger of death and destruction, the sick satisfaction she felt, torturing and maiming those who stood in her way. Those who wanted to hinder her victory, motherhood. The screams, and cries of those who perished, those who ran.
The twisted entertainment mixed with pity as she went after the child who could leap through the multiverse. It was, after all, a small enough sacrifice to reach her end goal.
When she saw herself, on the brink of draining the girl’s powers completely, the expression her children had given her-the monster under their beds. The sad look of compassion her Other Self (winsome, lucky, blessed with motherhood, innocent) had given her, as she gently caressed Wanda as the Scarlet Witch (undeserving, doomed, cursed, and thrice damned). And finally, the last look the girl she had tortured and terrorized to hell and back. Why was Wanda Maximoff fated to receive the pity of the world, as she burnt in hell?
Chancing one last look at the putrid corpse of the version of the man who had bested her, she regurgitated the emptiness of her stomach.
Struggling to breathe through her nose, she felt a lump of something congealed and slimy fighting to root itself to her insides. Instinctually, she pushed against her abdomen with her fists and threw up something black and wriggling out of her esophagus. The squirming thing was covered in her own blood and bile, its inky tendrils fought against the rocky surface of the caved-in mountain, as it tried to scramble out of her presence and scurry out.
Not thinking twice about it, and repulsed beyond comprehension, Wanda slammed a flat stone from her tomb against the eldritch slug. The resulting squelching sounds of the thing exploding under the slab, brought Wanda back to her hands and knees, and once more retched and arched in the dark of the night.
Nothing but bile came out of her, and she realized with a sinking feeling that she could not remember the last time she actually ate something.
Trembling against the cold, the dark, the guilt and horror, she looked at her own hands. The tips of her fingers were black, as if the magic that coursed through her veins had been poisoned and her flesh became gangrenous. She felt spoilt, from the inside out.
Wanda thought about all the things she had done and laughed hysterically in spite of herself. She laughed in pain, and terror, but also at her own stupidity. The ring of her laughter perturbed her more and more, until it developed into a long-suffering shriek. The snowed peaks above her rumbled, and the sky was illuminated with bolts of lightning-perhaps as a warning to whatever living thing that was nearby- as she finally lost her voice.
Wanda, or what was left of her at this point, turned to the corpse. It was dressed similarly to the Dr. Strange she had called a teammate, in what felt like centuries ago, but it was still so very different. Aside from the obvious decay and putrefaction, she could sense a similar energy left over in it.
Not really knowing herself, the Scarlet Witch, or Wanda, or Whomever She Was Left to Be, dragged the corpse out of the remaining rubble a few meters until she found loose soil instead of solid rock. With blackened fingers and chipped nails, she dug into the soil. Her mind circled the same memories of the past six months, from the Westview Hex to the moment she squashed the black slug that came from her insides, as she burrowed into the ground. Maybe it had been a few hours, or maybe it had been days-it was impossible to tell when the Wundagore tundra never ceased to be dark and uninviting- until she felt like she had made a sizeable dent in the soil. By the time she was able to push the corpse inside the gorge, her last company before she brought Chthon’s throne down to rubble in the entirety of the multiverse, Wanda’s fingers were bleeding and burning in pain. She looked at her fingers mesmerized by the blood against the blackened ends of her fingertips as she covered the Other Stephen Strange with the soil she had removed.
When she was done, she stood up on shaky legs, and stumbled about the tundra.
She ambled aimlessly for miles, her sight unfocused and uncaring, until she reached a precipice. She kicked a pebble with the toe of her boot, and watched it disappear down the crevice below her. She was unable to hear its drop, but she imagined a hissing ping as it finally touched the bottom of the gorge.
---*Trigger warning: suicide attempts. Go to next part where you see the little asterisk*----
Breathing in through her nose, she thought of the endless possibilities of the multiverse, the smiles of her boys as they put chocolate covered fingers into their mouths, their voices calling her ‘mom’, the home she had built with the scraps of dreams and good intentions she had leftover after a lifetime of failure. She turned away from the crevice and tilted back, her arms spread out behind her. She looked up to the churning sky. It looked like rain, she surmised, as she let out the air she was holding in through her mouth. The air rushed past her ears, and ruffled her hair, obscuring her view of the night as she let go.
She fell for a long time. Distantly, she felt her body crash into a frigid body of water gushing violently. A few rocks dug into her side. Sometimes she lost consciousness, and when her tired body lost the will to break the river’s surface for air, she felt a sort of quiet she hadn’t experienced in a very long time. Similar to the feeling of being turned to dust, but not quite.
She felt herself grow colder and vastly removed from her body, accepting it fully. But then she gasped and sputtered. Wanda retched murky water out of her lungs, as she turned to her side. She found herself lying over the loose pebbles filling the riverbank.
Annoyed, she tried again. And again. And again. And every single time, she gasped awake, and weakened-yet not enough to die.
She tried everything, she let herself bleed dry, only to wake up on the shore further up the river, the cold water lapping at her feet. Twice she tried gouging her heart out-she knew for a fact if she dug hard enough into her ribcage, she´d catch the monster hiding behind the prison made of bone she called chest- but she could not bring herself to. In her heart, at least symbolically to her, the final vestiges of the people she loved remained.
One final time, she let the current take her under. She travelled underground, giving in to the water’s whim. But she was invariably spat out. Lying half awake, she cried in anger and frustration-not even Death would come claim her.
*Trigger ends: Wanda tries to commit suicide but is unable to die*
When she opened her eyes, she used the light from her hands to inspect her surroundings. Ice covered the cave, and the sound of water lapping nearby seemingly mocked her. Not knowing what else to do, she used her arms to crawl about the cave until she found the water. It was not very deep, and when she rolled on her side to slide into the pool, the water barely covered her ears. Laying there in the solitude of ice and water, she let the cold seep into her bones, slow down her heart, and let it freeze her from the inside out. And with the last remaining vestiges of her conscience, she created a blockade. If she won’t be able to enter Death’s domain, then she will accept the cold and sleep in some uncharted place on Earth, where nobody will find her, or look for her. Where she won’t cause any more harm than she has already done. Thinking about a silly premise of an animated series she watched very long ago, she imprisoned herself into an ice floe with the certainty that if she is to be awakened is to the last day of the Earth, and nothing less.
And so, the Scarlet Witch who had been Wanda Maximoff at some point, slept for a very long time.
The thing about life and death though, was that fate liked to meddle in with its particular twists and turns. A small thing such as a tiny pebble rolling out of place, or increased rains that feed the underground river system, or just a thought out of place, would create a reaction chain of events seemingly unrelated to each other.
But for Wanda’s case, given the exceptionally strange circumstances she existed on, what ended up happening was that the thinning of the veil was near. And anything could happen, probabilistically speaking.
Which is why, while she dreamt of nightmares and crushing guilt and self-pittance, the glacier ice in which Wanda was embedded in, simply melted enough to get separated from the rest of the ice cavern and was dragged by the strong currents under once more. And thus, she travelled, unknowingly to many places, until she did not.
Life after jumping through the multiverse felt unnervingly calm for the man known as Dr. Strange. They had lost many disciples and masters during the Scarlet Witch’s massacre, and thus the repairs had to wait until all the dead had been accounted for and the proper rituals performed for each of them.
The woman viciously destroyed their magical homestead, and with the reduced forces of the remaining sorcerers and adepts, rebuilding began slowly. Wong oversaw the training of the disciples who were spared, young and fairly green, while Stephen was tasked with the repairs to the Kamar-Taj. The oldest disciples and acolytes worked non-stop alongside Stephen as walls and columns were replaced and stuck together with stronger fortifying spells. In the same space, the younger pupils trained and learned, the sounds of the repairs drilling into their minds the reason for their preparation-to be stronger in case of the event ever repeating itself.
At night, Stephen would retire to the Sanctum Sanctorum, to pick up on the supernatural work he had left over during the day in favor of attending to the various needs for repairs on the other side of the world. At the beginning, Wong would insist that América stay with him and the other pupils in her cohort at the Kamar-Taj dormitories. But the man was weak against puppy-dog eyes, and the girl was happily sent to New York, where she was given a room of her own, diagonal to Stephen’s own room.
It was for the best, Wong liked to think. After all was said and done, his friend became too quiet and not enough arrogant for his own peace of mind.
Wong noticed, with worry, how Stephen became less eccentric with his use of the mystic arts. In another life, Wong would have scoffed and thought nothing of it, but after years of knowing the doctor, he had come to enjoy his friend’s sudden outbursts of exuberance.
He saw the empty eyes, and dissociative air that surrounded Stephen Strange when he thought nobody was looking. He only did what felt right in his heart, and after calling in some favors with a certain user of the Ten Rings, he sent Stephen home to the Sanctum with América in tow. He reassured Stephen that ShangQi would definitely help out more when Stephen was at the Sanctum, so that he could watch over América more closely.
Stephen nodded, agreeing that protecting América was one of the priorities they had to cover.
América was just too excited to have another place to call home to even annoy Stephen.
And so, a strange semblance of a family life began to develop in the magical mansion of 177A Bleecker Street.
While Stephen taught América how to control and regulate her powers-emotion was the main power source of magic after all-, the young girl finally had a taste of what a normal life was.
As much normalcy could be achieved if you had multiversal powers and were learning the mystic arts. Even if she did not attend school like children her age, she still had lessons and adventures with her favorite people in that specific universe: Wong and Stephen.
A routine slowly began: mornings would start with Wong preparing breakfast for the three of them (sometimes five if ShangQi and his friend Katy joined in), while Stephen prepared the coffee for them all.
Stephen preferred his coffee dark and unsweetened, Wong drank his with a splash of oatmilk, while América liked hers with half coffee, half milk, and an inordinate amount of sugar that was probably not very healthy for a teenager.
She called this monstrosity café con leche, something she picked up in a universe where the Avengers-or los Vengadores- were from the United States of México, and the heroes there all spoke Spanish, just like her.
Sadly, someone was also trying to kill her in that universe, and América invariably ended up terrified for her life at some point, as a star shaped portal opened up and sucked her into the next universe over.
Rinse and repeat.
Still, breakfast time was extremely sacred, since it was the only time of the day where Wong would be able to visit and give them reports from the advances at Kamar-Taj over some pajeon or breakfast tortillas.
The rest of the day was spent teaching América at Kamar-Taj with the rest of her cohort, and for lunchtime, she would cross the portal back to the Sanctum.
Stephen liked to go out for lunch most of the days, and so the pair went out to have lunch at various New York locations. Sometimes people recognized him on the street and asked for pictures (to which he gave a polite yet firm no), but oftentimes, the general public’s cognitive dissonance of “Dr. Strange + young girl = Dr. Dad?” was far greater than he expected, and thus being seen in public with América was like a complete disguise of its own.
It is worth noting that after three times of leaving the Sanctum with color coordinated outfits by pure coincidence became the norm. Nobody with half a brain who knew how arrogant, desperately single, and unfatherly the man was would ever believe that he had adopted a child. Or would ever become a father (or something of the sort). It was the perfect disguise.
Night was a quiet affair as they prepared to settle in for the night by watching a few episodes of famous sitcoms, or by reading in the tearoom. The day officially ended for Stephen when he bid the girl goodnight and closed the door to her room quietly. Hands glowing golden in the dim light of the hallway, he placed layers of protective spells over her door.
Using his vast knowledge of the magical arts and their different currents, he finished off the spellwork each night by biting the cuticle of his index finger and drawing a bit of blood from the wound. Stephen would then proceed to draw very old, and very powerful sigils on the door frame with his blood-which by the end of the casting, disappeared into the wood.
Blood magic was the strongest magic he knew to perform without entering the murky waters of dark magic. He feared the times he was asleep when he was not conscious to be able to protect her. So, he did the next possible thing to ensure her safety.
Despite his days running smoothly, every time Stephen Strange got into bed, the purple bedspread warm and inviting, it was difficult to fall asleep.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw black stone carved with deathly magic crumbling towards him. From his vantage point, he could see the Scarlet Witch’s persona breaking and glimpses of a broken human being seeping through the cracks as she cried out in pain and anguish.
The split second between the final moments he had possessing the Other Stephen’s corpse was the worst: wild chaos magic surrounding the Scarlet Witch as she brought down the mountain fortress, her hair swaying serpentine in the musty air, his breath taken away (regardless of his decomposing body), as she looked at him with tears in her eyes. The sounds of the entire mountain coming down to entomb them were deafening, but he was able to read her lips as the last image he had of the woman called Wanda Maximoff seared into his mind.
I’m sorry.
Stephen turned that last scene over and over again in the privacy of his room.
Pragmatic as ever, he let himself feel bad for the teammate and person that was lost to the dark magic of the Darkhold for exactly fifteen minutes. Or that was what he liked to tell himself, right as his eyelids fell heavy with tiredness.
Thinking about that moment in time, where he saw a lost woman cry out for help, he falls to a fitful sleep.
In his dreams, Stephen often found himself fighting against monsters of origins unknown, platinum hair and a cocky smirk blurry in his mind as he opens his eyes.
Usually, he wakes up in the morning feeling battered, sweaty and his heart rate way too high for comfort. But after a few moments of re-adjusting to wakefulness, those very images dissipate. For a while, it was alright. Normal even.
Until he began waking up outside of his bed, his cloak levitating anxiously in the only way a sentient magical cloth could emote.
After that, it only got weirder when he realized he could remember every detail and emotion of his dreams, sometimes memories with slight alterations, other times sharp glimpses of something his very own mind had trouble remembering, coming up a blank in his dreams. But he knew he dreamed, even if he can’t remember those. On very rare occasions though, he dreams about her. Or more accurately, she haunts his dreams, even in death.
But to bring this story to a more recent and important time, when Stephen thinks about the events that lead to one of the most confusing stages of his life, he would agree that it all began one early April morning, three months after the events that led to his travels in the multiverse, as well as the siege of Kamar-Taj.
And it all began, like most stories do, with a sour dream and quiet contemplation of the past over a cup of coffee.
That particular April morning was fairly cold and dry, and Stephen’s first sensation upon waking up was the distinctive smell of ozone permeating the air, a clear sign of coming thunderstorms and churning skies for New York.
Watching the light of dawn dance against the glass window, Stephen tried shaking off the nightmare he just had. The slow awakening of the street below, the increase of traffic and noise outside gave him peace of mind and enough strength to slide out of bed and shrug on his sleeping robe before leaving his room.
He closed his door with a soft click, mindful of the quiet snores coming from América’s door. Sighing in relief, he made his way downstairs and into the kitchen to begin his morning ritual-coffee making.
While he was measuring the coffee they were going to drink to put in the coffeemaker’s basket, his eyes travelled to a single photograph pinned to the fridge’s door with a magnet shaped like Tony Stark’s arc reactor.
In the center, the man himself, Tony Stark was smiling widely at the camera, and around him, the rest of the Avengers posing for the picture. It had been taken during the off chance in between missions and training where the entire rooster of heroes was present in the same planet, and so Tony had decided to celebrate his birthday (it was not his birthday but he needed an excuse to party).
He barely remembered being dragged out of the Sanctum by… someone?, to take the picture. His eyes passed over the smiling faces of the people in the photograph, and noticed how more than half of them were not even alive anymore. He noticed the space between Steve and Tony and raked his brains as to why they left a space between them. Had they fought the day before? The easy smiles in their faces were genuine, and that confused him even more. Looking for himself, he found his serious semblance peeking from the right upper corner of the group shot.
Going from right to left, he counted the people left alive, until his eyes reached the slight figure at the bottom left side of the picture. The person had an awkward smile on her face, her straight dark brown hair was slightly wavy in the tips, and was slouching slightly due to Steve’s arm looped around her neck on one side, and to her other side Clint Barton ruffling the top of her hair. She was facing the camera, but not exactly smiling for it. More like she was shyly smiling to the person behind the camera.
But who was Wanda Maximoff smiling at?
The thought alone brought Stephen back to the dream he had had the night before, making him shiver.
He was at Stark Tower.
There were birthday banners and multicolored balloons floating around. Stephen felt a heavy hand pat him on his back. He turns around and finds Thor with a large jug of mead in his other hand, grinning at him. Stephen grinned back at him, unsure.
“Witch Strange! Are you having a good time?”, Thor asked in his usual friendly and loud voice.
Stephen found the corner of his smile dropping slightly into a scowl at Thor’s usage of the word ‘witch’.
“I am a Sorcerer, Thor. There is a difference.”, he crossed his arms over his chest as he lifted an eyebrow at the drunk god.
Thor just burst out laughing at his expense, as if he had said something really funny.
“Ah Friend Stephen, my brother- you know him, Loki-he was a master of the Seiðr arts! Just like you! A witch, a sorcerer, a Seiðrmann, or a wizard-whatever!”, he clapped Stephen on the shoulder, making Stephen lose his balance. Thor, not noticing the heavy glare he was receiving, took a long swig of his tankard and continued, “My mother always said men love to put into tiny little boxes the same things because we are afraid of them. My brother was a witch, or a sorcerer, or a Seiðr master- or in the off chance, a mistress too!”, looping one meaty and muscled arm around the doctor, Thor dragged him to the crowd of people congregating near the bar. “Anyways, it is time for what you, little Midgardians call ‘picture time’. Isn’t it nifty, how you make memories and put them in little papers with no magic at all?!” with one last ‘friendly shake’, Thor left Stephen to the crowd and struck up conversation with a trio of young people. He tried remembering who these people were, he felt like he knew them, but could not place them. Every time he tried focusing on their faces, something else would catch his attention.
Around him, he could see Natasha chatting with two women, Gamora and Nebula-his addled brain was able to dredge up. ‘But how…?’, He saw the wielder of the Ten Rings speak to Captain America of all people, sitting on the tall chairs by the bar, and behind them he noticed the Winter Soldier having a confusing conversation with the space warrior Drax.
On the other side of the bar, he found the king of Wakanda talking about kingly matters with a woman dressed in what looked like silver Asgardian finery. ‘King Brunhilde?’ Bewildered, everywhere he looked, he found people who had no chance of knowing each other making small talk and enjoying themselves.
Suddenly, the sound of tinkling glass alerted Stephen to the center of the room, where a camera on a tripod was positioned, and Tony Stark calling out attention towards himself.
“Hey!”, he yelled into the room, making everyone turn to him. “Great! Now that I have your undivided attention,” Tony made a grand sweeping gesture with his arm, pointing at the camera behind him, “It’s time to take a selfie with the birthday boy himself-Dr. Stephen Strange!”, the room burst out in clapping and wolf-whistles, as well as some excited wooping from an extraterrestrial woman with antennae.
Stephen felt himself be corralled into the center of the group picture, between Dr. Banner and Dr. Van Dyne, who were chatting amicably over him about the latest lab assistant fib of the week (“Hope I tell you; my new intern really did wear crocs without socks IN A LAB SETTING!”, “Yeah? Well, mine decided to stir his coffee with a micropipette”) With the amount of people crowding together, he wondered briefly how they would be able to fit in the frame. He was about to ask this, perhaps to move the camera back a few feet, when he felt warm puffs of air hit the back of his neck.
Suddenly, the noise around him became muffled, the lights dimmed, and an awful feeling of dread took hold of Stephen’s heart.
Slim and nimble fingers caressed the back of his neck, slowly moving up as they carded through his salt and pepper hair. His heart picked up in speed, as he tried to turn around, but he couldn’t. It was as if he was rooted to the spot, unmoving and unwilling. He felt the back of a hand softly trail from his temple, down to his cheek, until both hands at the side of his head rested on his shoulders for a moment before making their descent and crossing over his chest. He looked down at the hands splayed over his chest, dark fingertips tapping an unknown rhythm against his heart. His stomach twisted and turned, memories of a fight he was not sure he could win, or survive even, replayed in quick succession in his mind.
‘Wanda.’, he could not speak, his lips refusing to even move. But her name alone sent tremors down his back as he fought for control of his body.
Stephen felt Wanda’s soft breaths in the shell of his ear, while her lips barely brushed against his earlobe.
“S-…So…” she whispered unintelligibly at first, but then after a short silence she ends up saying, “Say cheese, Stephen”
Stephen suppressed a violent shiver as looked ahead to the camera and found a familiar looking android fiddling with the tripod.
It was the Vision, his head bent down as he tried figuring out how to manage the camera.
The purple android, appearing to be satisfied with the camera, looked up to Stephen, and smiled.
Stephen’s blood ran cold, and his words died on his mouth.
Vision smiling at him produced a gut wrenching feeling in Stephen, not because of his vacant smile and dull eyes. But rather, it had to be the empty, hollowed out part in the centre of his forehead, where the Mind Stone used to be, surrounded by cracks and dents. And he was looking. Straight. At. Him.
Unable to blink, or to even utter a single word, Stephen watched as the android brought a finger to his cheek, and lifted the corner of his lip while looking intently at him.
‘Smile for the camera, Dr. Strange’, he seemed to be saying.
He did not smile for the camera. He could only watch in abject horror as the flash went off, and in the nanosecond the contrast between the ambient light and the shutter casted a shadow over the room, the Vision changed.
White, clinical, unfeeling, blank.
Extremely dangerous.
“Are you going to clean that?” a voice behind Stephen broke him out of his reverie. Wong looked at the doctor with a mixture of friendly exasperation and understanding in his brown eyes.
Looking down, Stephen noticed he had already finished brewing the coffee at some point and had automatically began pouring the hot liquid into one of the mugs. He must have been pouring for a long time, as the coffee puddled and spilt over the counter and into the kitchen floor.
Sighing dejectedly, Stephen moved his right hand over the mess and willed the liquid back into the coffee pot still in his other hand.
Wong made a face of disgust at that.
“I hope you make another batch, because I am not drinking dirty coffee water” He said as he opened the fridge to take out a carton of milk before flicking the cap off and chugging straight from it. Now it was Stephen’s turn to look mildly displeased.
“That’s highly unhygienic of you” Stephen said as he dumped the coffee down the drain. Wong just scowled at his friend and shrugged.
“I am Sorcerer Supreme” Wong said jokingly.
Stephen deadpanned at him and went back to the coffee maker. “Yeah, and that’s América’s milk for her café con leche” He said with finality.
Wong rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath, “Fine. I’ll get a new carton from the pantry”
In the silence that followed, the Sorcerer Supreme began collecting the ingredients necessary for scallion pancakes from the pantry. Noticing Stephen closer to the fridge, he turned to him to ask him to get the eggs and scallions for him.
“Stephen” Wong called out from his spot by the chopping board but got no reply. Sighing inwardly, he walked over to his colleague and found him staring intently at the picture he kept pinned to the fridge’s door.
Quickly, he understood.
“Weird dream with her again, right?” Wong asked, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder.
Stephen just nodded.
“Me too” Wong sighed, tiredness crossing his features, “I don’t think América was right when she said that we dream about our Other Selves from other universes all the time” He mused out loud, “Perhaps she doesn’t, and that is for the best. After all she’s been through, it’s better for her to not dream. But for us, I like to think that we see glimpses of other universes when the veil between realities is weak enough, don’t you think?”
Distractedly, Stephen hummed.
Wong reached for the picture and brought it closer to his face, narrowing his eyes as he took in every person in the picture.
The sorcerer hummed under his breath, “Sometimes I look at this photo, and every time I do, I can’t bring myself to reconcile that the same woman sitting in there between Captain America and Hawkeye was the same person who was prophesized to bring the universe to its knees. And for a short moment, she may have succeeded”, Wong stroked his chin, pensively, “I like to keep it here, as a reminder of what any of us is capable of doing”
Somber, Stephen nodded. He was all too familiar with the duality of human nature by now.
Somewhere on a grey and inhospitable mountain ridge, hidden from the governments of the world, old and new, a fortress of grey slab sits under a formidable legacy of blood. In it, a woman is sitting at the head of a planning table, her subordinates eagerly taking notes and carrying out her every command.
While her righthand man coordinates the fall of stocks pertaining to certain socialites and corporations allied with her enemies- interminable mafias and gangs roaming the continent and beyond-, her lefthand man sends quiet operatives to neutralize threats that have become too cocky for her taste.
As she looks around, she finds people of all ways of life and creeds, a melting pot of cultures and backgrounds, but all so very similar to each other when it comes to the basics. She smirks, proud and powerful as she lets herself relish on the past year she had come back to her father’s compound and decided to clean the house of pests and poisonous flowers. It had been no walk in the park, that was for sure. But the splash of color and chaos, of equal opportunity, had been the most satisfying change so far.
All roads lead to Rome, as they say. And as Xu XiaLing learned throughout her life as the leader of one of the most powerful operatives in the world, Rome was where the Emperor sat.
“Our sleeper agent in the Carpathian Mountains has not contacted us in three months, ma’am. No reports have been sent to us, and the tracker we had put on him simply lost connection.” The leader of the tech support team piped up when she was able to turn in her report at the meeting table.
Sharing a discreet look with Mattias, XiaLing turned back to the IT woman. “What were his last whereabouts, Kathia?”, she asked calmly leaning forward, her elbows resting at the top of her knees.
Clearing her throat, Kathia used her phone to dim down the lights and pull down the projector screen. In it, a winding maze of a map was shown, with various flags and dots with different colors were displayed in the screen.
“Agent Book had mapped out most of the fortress’ hallways and rooms, especially the library. On such a night he had been assigned to make rounds in his usual area, he suddenly disappeared. This was a usual thing though, considering his…training” Kathia paused, sighing in frustration, “But after 24 hours of no show, we became worried and checked the last info that had been transmitted” She tapped on her phone as medical data flashed in the screen, “Before it became disconnected, the tracker detected no heart rate and low oxygen levels. He was dead before we lost signal, ma’am”
XiaLing considered this new development in silence as she leaned back in her seat.
“Do we still have footage from his lenses?”, she asked the technician.
Kathia nodded, “Yes. The night before he dropped out his lenses in the assigned spot, ma’am. It is 4 months’ worth of surveillance and further mapping of the castle and its surrounding areas”, she closed the projection, and the lights came back on.
XiaLing nodded, satisfied. Knowing the threat level of that particular operative, she knew better than to send back another agent, lest she lose them like the past two.
“Go over the combined footage of Agents Book and Page from the library and create a data base for each of the targets. We can safely bring this operation to the backburner for now. If you find anything, you know what to do”, XiaLing stood up from her seat and turned to her subordinates, who bowed their heads in her direction as they also stood in time with her. JonJon clapped his hands and led the various heads of departments out of the meeting room.
“Alright, you heard the boss! Back to work!”, he said animatedly, as the room slowly emptied out.
Rolling her shoulders, XiaLing made her way out into the training grounds, flanked by Mattias and JonJon as they surveilled the new trainees.
“They are a little bit green, Mat, don’t you think?” XiaLing asked suddenly, making her companions pause in the middle of the courtyard. Nodding slowly, Mattias looked at the trainees.
“Yes. But it is expected of them. What have you got in mind?” he asked, fully knowing where this was going. Behind them, JonJon looked at the new trainees, silently sending them his condolences.
“What about a little hike, just to get them acclimatized to the mountain weather”, she said with a ferocious grin, gesturing vaguely with her hand over the snowy peaks that surrounded the Golden Ten Rings Compound.
Nodding sagely, the Romanian agreed and set out to start the preparations for the incoming training expedition.
Behind them, JonJon sighed, and thanked his lucky stars that he was more valuable as a brain than as a foot soldier.
“Heeeeey LingLing! What up girl!?” Said a voice coming in from XiaLing’s phone.
The new Mistress of the Ten Rings waved at her friend as she positioned her phone against the mirror in her dresser table.
“Hey, Arrow Girl. Same old, spring cleaning this dusty ass operation my old man left”, she said as she sprayed her white jade guasha paddle with serum as part of her skin care routine.
“Oh, how’s progress on that end?”, Katy Chen asks from the other side, as sounds of rustling can be heard in the background.
XiaLing shrugs, feeling exceptionally accomplished in that moment. “Very close to completion if I do say so myself. Loyalty is being forged right now as we speak” Katy grimaced at her friend from her little square on the WeChat video call.
“Aw man, don’t tell me you sent the new kids down to the frozen river again”
XiaLing grinned as she pats her cheeks lightly.
Katy shook her head. “LingLing you’re killing me here”
XiaLing stuck her tongue out at her friend, “Be grateful Ge likes you enough to keep you around, that’s all I am saying. If not… you know there’s an open space here for you”, XiaLing bantered with a wink.
Whether Katy blushed because of the ShangQi comment or XiaLing’s invitation, it was better left unsaid.
“Er…“, Katy sputtered, but then she looked off camera and waved to a third person. “Heeeyy, c’mere, guess who I’m chatting with!”
Peeking out from the corner of the screen was her older brother, who waved at her excitedly.
“LingLing! Hey! How’s it going?”, ShangQi, or Shaun as he was known to some, grinned at her from his seat next to Katy.
“Good, you know. Preparing for QingMing here” She said, a note of sadness at the edge of her voice.
Her brother nodded mutely, his heart dropping a bit like usual when he talked about his parents.
Noticing the sad vibe, Katy took control of the conversation, “Hey, A-Ling, Wong’s inviting out for karaoke night today. Wanna come with? He’s bringing his sort-of-niece- the one I told you about the other day, that Dr. Strange picked up. Can you believe she’s never gone karaoking? She’s gonna need two jiejie’s to teach her the way!” Katy said excitedly, already making plans to take this new kid under her wing.
XiaLing frowned and looked at the digital clock in her nightstand. “Tonight, tonight?”, upon Katy’s chirped out ‘yep!’, XiaLing shook her head no. “Sorry, I’ll have to join you guys another time. The new trainees should be coming in tomorrow morning and I have to see them brought back in”
Katy ‘aaaww-ed’ at XiaLing’s excuse, while ShangQi nodded in understanding.
“Next month, though?” he asked, a bit of hope in his eyes.
XiaLing nodded, “For sure”
Just as she had closed the call and was preparing to turn in for the night, she heard a slight scuffle outside in the hallway. Frantic footfalls stopped by her bedroom’s sliding door. She heard a soft sigh, as if the person behind the door was steeling themselves for the moment.
A knock.
“XiaLing?”, Mattias’ worried voice sounded from the corridor. She stood up and shrugged on her winter sleeping robe before sliding the door open in one clean motion.
“What’s happening?” she cut straight to the chase as she followed the man out of the main sleeping quarters of the compound. Looking back to her as he speed-walked along the wooden panels of the hallway, Mattias gave her a look that screamed trouble loud and clear.
“Fuck.” XiaLing swore under her breath, mentally preparing to see something awful.
Perhaps one of her big operatives had been found out and wiped. Or maybe, a government entity finally was able to bypass her satellite blockade and spotted their location.
Passing by the courtyard, she thought about the trainees she had sent down to the river two days ago.
“Fuck.” She swore, a little bit louder this time, as she breezed through the maze of hallways that led to the basement where they kept their dangerous weapons and vehicles.
When she entered the elevator that overlooked the testing rigs, she found her tech people surrounding a large object on the ground floor. They were firing two flamethrowers at the thing, but before she could see what it was they were testing their weapons, they had lost enough altitude to peek over the crystal walls.
“Troop D-43 came back earlier than programmed.” Began Mattias as they made their descent to the testing basement, “They brought something weird, and their troop leader decided it was better if you took a look at it yourself.”
Walking towards the technicians in fireproof protective gear, she made her way to whatever it was they were trying to burn to a crisp.
XiaLing did not know what else she expected, but that certainly was not it.
“Fuck this shit.” she spat in exasperation, as the technicians looked up at her in horror.
Somehow, a gigantic block of ice had garnered enough concern from her trainees that they decided to bring it back home. The reason?
Mainly two:
One. It was impossible to melt.
Two. It contained a woman dressed in red, completely encased within the ice.
XiaLing noticed the congealed blood floating about the block of ice, as well as the dark bags and overall squalor in the face of the woman frozen solid in the middle of her lab.
She looked sick, probably dead. Extremely paranormal. XiaLing resisted the urge to growl in the presence of her subordinates.
The lab manager stepped up and informed their Mistress on the situation at hand. “We have tried everything to take her out of the ice, boss. Flamethrowers, UV light, even a sledgehammer. Nothing, it won’t budge a millimeter.” His worried expression unnerved XiaLing even more.
Dragging a hand down her face, she decided that it was going to be a long night. And a long journey to seek out the only person who might be able to understand what in the hell was going on.
“Mattias, get JonJon and inform him of…our visitor. It’s time to initiate protocol TL-01. Nobody is to know where I am. If I come back, it might be in a year’s time-you know how it is.” Mattias nodded as he barked out orders to the lab techs.
“We’ll hold the fort, XiaLing.” He promised sincerely, saluting with his only hand.
XiaLing nodded and walked to the elevator, “I will get ready. Prepare my vehicle. I am to leave as soon as you secure the ice cube into the jeep and properly take the measures to make it as inconspicuous as possible, have I made myself clear?” she glared at her technicians.
The lab techs nodded enthusiastically as they dispersed to make the preparations their leader had ordered.
Once inside the privacy of the elevator, Xu XiaLing let herself curse to hell and back the supernatural in the world.
“Motherfucking piece of ice.”